1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a plasma display panel and a method of fabricating the same and, more particularly, to a plasma display panel in which an electrode layer is formed on a non-photosensitive black insulating layer and electrode materials capable of being integrated by being simultaneously sintered are employed.
2. Description of the Related Art
A plasma display panel (PDP) is one of the flat panel displays and a display which competes with LCDs or projection TVs and recently has rapidly increased its market share.
For example, an AC-type PDP comprises a glass substrate in which a transparent electrode (holding electrode) and a bus electrode are covered with a dielectric layer and which is called a front substrate, and another glass substrate which has a cell structure comprised of an address electrode, a dielectric layer, a partition, and fluorescent material and which is called a rear substrate. The substrates are disposed to face each other so that their electrodes are crossed each other.
Voltage is applied between the electrodes of both substrates to cause electric discharge in a cell, and ultraviolet rays generated at this time excite the fluorescent material in the cell, thereby realizing light emission. Due to the structure of the panel, an image which is formed by combining luminous red, green, and blue (RGB) cells is visible from behind a surface of the front substrate, on which the electrodes are formed. Therefore, in order to improve the quality of the image, a method of forming a black electrode between the transparent electrode and the bus electrode has been suggested as a method of avoiding visibility of a rear surface of the bus electrode of the front substrate, which corresponds to a display surface.
A method of forming a black electrode layer using a black pigment which consists mostly of conductive metal and metal oxides, or another method in which a black electrode layer and a white electrode layer are sequentially formed and sintered at a high temperature on a glass substrate so as to reduce visibility of the electrode through a rear surface have been extensively known in the fabrication of the plasma display. However, these are problematic in that, since precious metal, such as Ag, or metal oxides, such as RuO2, are used in the black electrode layer, the material cost is high.
With respect to a method of forming the black electrode, Japanese Patent Laid-Open publication No. Hei. 10-255670 uses ruthenium oxide, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 9-55167, and Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 2002-25451 and 2002-56774 employ metal powder and a black pigment as conductive particles. However, all of the above-mentioned technologies use costly metal powder as conductive material so as to enable a black layer to function as an electrode.
Use of a photosensitive black layer material employing only metal oxide has been studied to overcome the above problems. However, this is problematic in that very limited types of metal oxides are applied to the black pigment because of a significant gradual change in viscosity due to reaction with photosensitive organics.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-220551 discloses a photosensitive black composition containing no conductive material. However, this has a limit in that a black pigment to be used must be subjected to surface treatment because of a significant increase in viscosity of the composition due to reaction with components of the photosensitive composition.